Too Late
by mg7777
Summary: This is a one-shot based on how Abby has said that her husband was close to killing her before she called Olivia. In this scenario, Olivia didn't make it to Abby's in time and Abby didn't survive.


Disclaimer: I do not own Scandal or any of the characters

So this is a pretty dark fanfic, but basically it is my take on what would have happened if Olivia had been too late when she received Abby's call about the domestic abuse. It's inspired by how Abby has revealed multiple times that her husband was close to killing her and Olivia saved her life, so I wondered what would have happened if Charles actually did kill her. I hope you enjoy it.

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><p>She was sleeping when the call came. She stumbled out of bed and slowly walked through her apartment to the kitchen, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes as she went. She wasn't in a hurry—she didn't know why someone was calling so late, but didn't think it was a big deal. By the time she reached the phone it had stopped ringing. She frowned, and checked the caller ID. It wasn't a number she recognized. She was just turning to head back to bed, when the phone began to ring again.<p>

_Did those extra minutes matter? If she had answered the phone the first time, would the outcome have been different?_

"Hello?" She asked groggily.

"Olivia?" A voice whispered on the other end. "It's Abby."

Olivia was confused. She hadn't spoken to her old friend since their law school graduation. They'd gone separate ways, and neither one had fought it. After all, law school was great but they both knew that they had plans in life and couldn't be dependent on old friends. They had severed ties and began their new lives. So why was Abby calling Olivia at 1 o'clock in the morning? Before she could ask, Abby began to speak again.

"I, um, I'm know it's late, but I just didn't know who else to call."

Olivia could hear the fear and pain in her friend's voice. "What is it?" She asked. "What's wrong?"

"Can you come get me?" Abby's voice sounded like she'd been crying, and Olivia knew better than to interrogate her.

"Where are you?"

Abby relayed the address and then hung up the phone. Olivia quickly got dressed and hurried out her door to her car.

_She'd always meant to get a phone for her room. Maybe if she had, she would have answered the phone sooner, left her house faster, arrived earlier, been able to help._

It was cold outside and snow was piled up next to the roads, but none was falling from the sky. The moon shone brightly amid the stars and Olivia couldn't help but breathe in the fresh night air and revel in how pleasant it was, despite the snowy week they'd just had. She was standing outside of her car, in front of a large house in Virginia, not too far from D.C. Olivia looked around, but she didn't see Abby. She began to walk up the front path, but before she reached the door she noticed some red snow by the corner of the house. She walked over, and looked around the side. Olivia gasped when she saw her friend's body lying in the snow, her back pressed up to the base of the house, a cell phone clutched tightly in her hand.

_She knew that she would never forget that sight. For months after, she dreamt of it, felt herself gripping the lifeless body and begging her to wake up, but, of course, she never did._

Olivia rolled Abby onto her back and observed how beautiful she looked, dressed in a white nightgown, lying on pure white snow, the only color coming from her bright red hair and the blood trickling out of the wound on her jaw. It was as if she was an angel, surrounded by a field of pale white clouds, a perfect resting place but so very lonely. Olivia winced noticing the bruises that were covering Abby's porcelain skin. She felt for a pulse, but there was none. Her heart began to quicken and her chest felt as though it were about to explode. She had no idea what to do—her friend's death wasn't something she knew how to handle. In a panicked frenzy she dialed 911 and explained to the operator where she was and what her emergency was.

_When the cops checked the phone, they saw that Abby had found Olivia's new number online. She had specifically looked for Olivia's number, no one else's. Olivia wasn't sure why, and she almost wished it hadn't been her. She was too late, and now she would have to live with that forever._

The sirens wailed and paramedics arrived to whisk Abby off to the hospital even though it was clear that she wasn't alive. They explained that they needed to run an autopsy, but Olivia wondered why they couldn't just leave Abby alone to rest in peace. The next few hours were a blur of activity for Olivia and she barely remembered them. She accompanied Abby to the hospital, police officers took her statement, doctors apologized for her loss, everyone said they would give her an update later about her friend, but no one came back. And then finally, a somber looking doctor approached Olivia, who was sitting in a rock hard chair in the hospital waiting room.

"We ran the autopsy," he began. "Your friend was beat up pretty badly. Someone broke her jaw and three of her ribs. Unfortunately, one of the ribs punctured a major blood vessel near her heart, and she bled out. Do you have any knowledge of who could have done this too her?"

Olivia shook her hear numbly. "I-I don't really know her that well. I think she's married?" The end of her sentence turned up as if it were a question and she was ashamed of how little she knew about a woman that she had once been best friends with.

"We'll have the cops look into it, see if she has a husband." The doctor replied, before walking away.

_They did X-rays of her, while her body was lying in the hospital morgue. Olivia was shocked when the doctors told her about all of the old breaks that they'd seen in Abby's bones. This obviously was not an isolated event. Someone had been hurting her on a regular basis._

The police ended up finding enough evidence to convict her husband, Charles, of domestic abuse and second-degree murder. He had the audacity to try to prove his innocence in court, but Olivia made sure the prosecution won the case. In her opinion, prison wasn't a harsh enough punishment for what he had done, but it was the best she could do.

When the hospital was done using Abby's body to find proof against Charles, they released it to the funeral home that Olivia had chosen to help her plan the funeral. Olivia had been unable to find any close friends of Abby's, which furthered her uneasy idea that Abby had been all alone with her demonic husband. Abby's parents flew in, and Olivia realized it was actually the first time she'd met them. She knew that Abby and her parents weren't that close, but they were family and they deserved to say good-bye one last time. She called a few of their old friends from law school and the parents called some other family members. It was a small crowd who huddled in the funeral home's main room to mourn Abby, but it was the best Olivia could do.

_It was an open casket. But Olivia knew that no one who looked at the body lying there could see the real Abby. The funeral home had put her in a pretty dress and covered her in makeup, and the bruises that had covered her body seemed as though they ceased to exist. People may have been looking at Abby's corpse, but they could no longer see the signs of her suffering, the battle scars that revealed how hard she had to fight to stay alive each day. _

Olivia thought the funeral was beautiful, almost too beautiful. It might have been a better representation of Abby's death if there hadn't been so many flowers setting a pleasant scene, if it hadn't been such a gorgeous day as her casket was lowered into the ground. No one acknowledged the elephant in the room—that none of the attendees had been there for Abby when she really needed them. Everyone there had showed up after her death, but if they had just seen what was wrong with her life, maybe they could have prevented this tragedy. A young woman who was just starting her life had been taken from the world too soon, and no one took the blame.

_Her tombstone was simple, Olivia knew she would have scoffed at a fancy one, and probably come up with a witty remark about how unnecessary it was—after all, she was dead, why did she need an expensive stone angel? Abigail Whelan, the stone read. Her birthday was on there, and the day she died, but Olivia didn't like to look at that part, it only emphasized how young Abby was and how much more she had to look forward to in life. Instead, she read the last part, the part that Abby's parents had picked. Olivia found it sickening how fitting this was, to Abby's situation. How her parents had thought to engrave it in stone, but somehow forgot it while their daughter was alive._

"_She concealed her tears but shared her smiles"_

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><p>I know the epitaph at the end was kind of cheesy (although in my defense I did not come up with that epitaph on my own, I found it online and thought it seemed fitting). Please review, it would be greatly appreciated!<p> 


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